Yes. Yes it does.

I won’t say that I had high hopes for this. I mean I enjoyed the first one, but I watched it with some friends on a big screen TV in one of their apartments while enjoying an adult beverage. Still, it looked to me from the trailers that they got the Surfer right and that’s important since this might be a setup for a future SS film. Combine that with the fact that we were getting together as a group again and seeing this on the big screen and it was go for launch. For me though it was more roman candle than space shuttle.
The setup is that the government detects a mysterious object that came from deep space. Said object is apparently causing all sorts of unnatural disasters. Meanwhile, Reed and Sue are set to tie the knot and it’s been postponed a couple too many times for the living Barbie doll’s taste. So Reed vows not to put it off any more. Cue the soldier boys stepping in to ask for his help. He says no, but we all know how that’s gonna play.
Of course it turns out that the object is the Silver Surfer and he’s paving the way for Galactus. Confronting the herald of the eater of worlds turns out to be about as difficult as one should expect. It causes a number of interesting things to happen, including the resurrection of Doom and giving Johnny some sort of power switching… power. Ultimately they figure out how to capture him, only to discover that he’s the only one that can defeat the monster that’s about to eat the planet. Plot-wise that’s about all I’ll say.
There’s not a lot of good in this movie, but there is some and I’ll start with that. They do nail the Silver Surfer. Fishburne is giving him the voice and that works very well as does the CGI. The little bit of back story we get is true to his origins and offers a tease that will be expanded should he get his own flick. FF also refuses to take itself too seriously. In a summer full of blockbuster sequels that practically collapse under their own weight, it was refreshing that they kept this light. I think they also did a good job with Johnny. He was easily the strongest member of the team in regards to depth of character. Of course that’s a problem, when by his nature he shouldn’t be. There are a few funny bits of dialog and good action scenes, but they’re far too few.
The bad in this film though absolutely blows any good that it had out of the water. Let’s start with Doom. He should be menacing. His armor should almost be a character in and of itself. We should never see his face. None of this happens. Instead of the power hungry, brilliantly mad, ruler of Latveria we have an arrogant pretty boy with foam rubber body armor. The relationship between Reed and Sue is completely devoid of any emotion, in fact there was more heat between Sue and Johnny. In fact the whole movie lacked the kind of gee whiz spark that it should have had. There is not just one, but two open plot threads regarding the movie’s “bad guys”. When one of the main characters dies (as much as anyone ever stays dead in the movies, I’m not sure that this is a spoiler) I felt absolutely nothing. Then there are the methods they use to defeat Doom and Galactus, the way they depicted Galcatus itself, and the dialog, the painful dialog. It’s just one giant mess.
Similar to Spidey the Third, the movie does try and touch on choice when it comes to that which you serve, but the touch is clumsy at best. The most interesting and ironic deeper issue that does get addressed is commercialism and greed. Johnny Storm is all about the sponsorship. Thanks to that this film is loaded to the gills with product placement. Ultimately, it seems that the people behind the Fantastic Four movies are determined to serve the bottom line. By cranking out short, shallow sequels and signing on every advertiser they could lay their hands on I have no doubt we’ll see a third entry since this one will make back its investment without breaking a sweat. I doubt seriously that any future entries will bother to serve something as interesting or important as the story.